Graduates with backgrounds in finance and banking will stand a better chance of landing their ideal jobs this year, while those with science and engineering diplomas might face a predicament in which supply exceeds demand, a human resources consultancy said yesterday.
"The financial sector has replaced the high-tech industry and become the major employer this year," said Kevin Zang (
Large-scale financial services providers, such as Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (
Chinatrust Financial said in January that it will boost its workforce by a third this year to cope with a continued expansion and the need to internationalize operations.
Taipei Fubon Bank (
The recruitment will focus on hiring basic-level salespeople, including specialists in personal finance and telemarketing personnel, as well as high-level professionals, such as management associates, as well as those with expertise in developing new financial products, planning and marketing, risk management and data mining.
In stark contrast, the hiring needs of major high-tech companies have shrunk dramatically. In the past each firm used to recruit at least 3,000 engineers annually.
With the exception of two high-tech giants, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (
The five major TFT-LCD manufacturers, meanwhile, are also reducing their total hiring needs from 6,300 staff last year to 4,000 this year, Zang said.
The job market shake-up is also driven by the booming real estate and transportation sectors, he added.
Thanks to a surge in new housing units and the slow recovery of the property market, graduates from civil engineering, construction, land administration and urban planning departments have become highly sought.
In addition, the shipping industry is expanding at an unprecedented rate, with each company bringing in new fleet every year and offering favorable salary packages. Newcomers in shipping companies are entitled to over NT$110,000 (US$3,500) in monthly pay and year-end bonuses equivalent to between 10 and 12 times their monthly salaries, Zang said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained